Time machine: Infosys to build tallest free-standing clock tower.

Software giant Infosys is all set to build the world’s tallest free-standingclock tower at its 345-acre global education centre in Mysuru, a site it proudly claims as the world’s biggest corporate university, in apparent deference to founder and former chairman NR Narayana Murthy’s wishes.

At 135 metres, the proposed tower will be taller than Big Ben (96 m) in London, Hoover Tower (87 m) in California and McGraw Tower (53 m) in Cornell.

The tower, to be built in Gothic style to meld with the classical look of the other buildings in the campus, will have 19 floors and a board room at level seven. It will be erected from a 22×22 metre base.

The company estimates the project to cost about Rs 60 crore and take 20 months to complete. Murthy confirmed the plans for the clock tower to ET.

Confirming the plans to ET, Murthy said the Mysuru training centre was “incomplete without a clock tower”.

“A clock tower brings a sense of academic breathing to the campus, and I felt we too will need one. And Vishal (Sikka) felt it is a good idea,” he said.

The tower has been designed by Hafeez Contractor, the Mumbai-based architect who also designed Infosys’ Mysuru campus. LERA, a New York-based firm of structural engineers is providing structural consultancy services for the tower, which is being built by Bengaluru-based KEF Infra.

KEF, a two-year-old construction startup founded by Kerala-born and Dubaibased engineer Faizal E Kottikollon, will pre-cast the structure at a facility in Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu, and assemble the entire structure at Mysuru.

Infosys has received most of the approvals required for the project, said the company’s executive vice-president for infrastructure, Ramadas Kamath. While the clock tower will be classical, the time piece adorning it will be a digital one.

“We are trying to marry tradition with modern technology at this tower. The tower will have a large digital screen on all the four sides. We will also use it to run text messages on important occasions,” said K P Nagaraj, who is Infosys’ resident architect.

Infosys’ global education centre in Mysuru is a one-of-its-kind corporate training centre through which most new recruits of the company, especially software engineers, have to pass before being assigned to projects. At any given point of time, the centre has thousands of people undergoing training programmes.

The sprawling campus, which has facilities ranging from a swimming pool to food courts to movie halls, has trained more than 100,000 entry-level engineers and can house 15,000 trainees at any given time.